Just a few days remain before Christmas day, and you forgot to get a
gift for your GM. Oh man, are you in trouble! You'll fail every roll for
months, and be every monster's target until he finally forgives you. But
wait, there's one last chance - use this list of downloadable goodies,
and buy a gift or two with no shipping time involved. OgreCave's fourth
and final gift list each year suggests digital game goodies, from
roleplaying PDFs to collectible card games. There's even a video game
(*gasp!*) with some strong ties to the tabletop. While our other 2008
lists have many great gift ideas, if you're out of time, allocate
your gaming bandwidth toward these fun files.

The Penny Arcade strip has already made it to CCGs, but that was just a
warm up. Technically the second episode in the Penny Arcade
Adventures series, this 3D turn-based RPG stands alone quite well.
From a large d20 tumbling across the screen to determine combat
initiative, to steampunk robots doing obscene things to fruit, the game
pokes fun at a wide swath of gaming - just like Penny Arcade itself.
Watch for evidence of the Cloying Odor Sanitorium patients drawing up
graph paper dungeons and leaving stacks of character sheets around
(roleplaying - that way lies madness...). Though we fully endorse
playing through the first episode as well, the OgreCave crew is enjoying
our romp through On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, even
without an ogre-sized safety harness.

Take one mad bunch of players and two of Call of Cthulhu's classic
campaigns, record virtually every single session of play, and you have
the basic concept of this DVD. In playing through The Complete Masks of
Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express, the Bradford players give
you an incredible 130 hours of listening, enabling you to experience
vicariously all the pleasure of our hobby without having to suffer the
foibles of your fellow gamers! Beyond the two campaigns, the DVD is
stuffed with interviews, music, scenarios for Call of
Cthulhu, and even a drinking game to play while you listen - definitely not work safe! Lastly, the DVD provides two PDFs from sponsor Green
Ronin Publishing - one of classic Dungeons & Dragons quest The
Freeport Trilogy, and the other Cults of Freeport. At
its heart though, Lovecraftian Tales From The Table offers both hours of
listening and an appreciation of two of Call of Cthulhu classic
campaigns.

Whether Christmas or Hanukkah, now is definitely the time to do good,
and what better way to do good than fight evil? There are forces out
there on the "naughty list" who work to ruin everyone's fun and make the
season ever bleaker, colder, and harsher. These include Jaques Frost,
the polar explorer who searches the icy wastes for ancient secrets and
sends unfrozen prehistoric monsters to terrorize civilization; Antiochus
the Defiler, who commands an army of spectral Seleucid soldiers and
seeks to destroy all holy relics; and the miser extraordinaire Doctor Scrooge, whose insane
greed is backed by the power of money - and when that doesn't work, he
sends his bullies the Cratchits to deal out a beating! Standing against
them are the Spirits of Giving - Nick Saint and his allies, The
Reindeer Men - and the Spirits Of Guardianship, Judah "HaMakav"
Hammerstein, Matthew "Shamash" D'Israeli, and Hannah Cohen and her
allies, the Cohen boys. These "Spirits of the Season" are fully detailed
in this little supplement for the preeminent pulp action game of age,
Spirit of the Century, as well as the top-notch superhero RPG
Truth & Justice. Perfect seasonal support for either game and
either festival, Spirit of the Season can be used as a book of new foes to
face, a mini-campaign, or just as inspiration for the perfect seasonal
gaming.

One of the most popular abstract boardgames these days is Blokus
(at least, according to our friends in retail) - somewhat akin to
Tetris, with players each playing one color, trying to place
odd-shaped tiles on the grid board without putting them alongside any of
their previous pieces. As board space runs out, placement becomes
progressively difficult, making for a frustrating - and addictive -
game. Blokus World Tour brings the title to your PC, providing
five difficulty levels, over a dozen computer opponents, a tournament
format, and more. Be warned: you may have trouble pulling yourself away
from this one.

There's a sort of horror story that you might call a vampire story,
whether or not there's technically a vampire in it: a web of people,
some of them servants and all of them in their own way victims, united
by a central, corrupting personality. Annalise is a story game that
does vampire stories. Designed by Nathan Paoletta, designer of
Timestream and carry: a game about war, a game of Annalise can be over
and done in one session or stretch into a mini-campaign. It's like a
goth remix of My Life With Master that takes the Master, cuts it up
into bits and gives pieces to everyone. Despite the buzz this game's
been getting, it isn't clear that it's ever going to see print in a
paper edition, nor that even this PDF will be around forever...

Here at the Cave, we're always on the lookout for new gaming
periodicals, and we've recently caught the scent of a new one:
Weredragon Magazine. Created by a collection of devoted gamers,
this new quarterly magazine starts out strong with three sizable D&D
3.5 adventures for various character levels. Other articles in the
inaugural 101-page issue cover character background development, a Gen
Con report, a few comic strips, and even a gaming snack recipe (!).
Still a bit rough around the edges, the magazine's potential to break
into the mainstream is easy to see - get your taste now, so you can say
you knew them when. Overall, Weredragon has some nifty ideas to
offer curious fantasy gamers. We'll be interested to see where WM
takes things next.

Tunnels and Trolls 7.5Fiery Dragon, $35 (currently marked down to $15 at rpgnow.com)

If you know someone who feels that the latest incarnation of D&D has
strayed too far from its roots, perhaps you should give the gift of
Tunnels and Trolls. Until a couple of years
ago and its seventh edition, T&T was essentially unchanged since the seventies. Things
have evolved a little thanks to additions like character skills and a
more original leveling system, but the game remains very close to the
spirit of the golden days when characters were created by rolling lots
of dice, dungeons were for crawling, and nothing was meant to be taken
too seriously. It also retains T&T's hallmark of high solitaire
suitability, so gamebook fans as well as group roleplayers should take
note. The latest 7.5 release brings the game to the electronic format
in a big way, providing a virtual boxed set with not just rules but also
solo and group adventures and plenty of extras. T&T has been around for
a long time and has quite a cult following, but it doesn't always get
the attention it deserves; this may be just the right surprise for a
gamer with a love of the old school or the long-time Tunnels & Trolls fan who hasn't
realized the game still lives on. If they like what they find
here, there's also a wealth of support material out to explore.

There's nothing earth-shakingly innovative about The Far Wilds - its
fantasy world is generic, and its gameplay is as comfortable as a warm
bath, being basically a melange of Magic and old OgreCave fave Vortex
played out on a large hex-gridded landscape - except that it's in your
choice of PC app or very full-featured no-download Flash app, and sold
as virtual cards. And while the outer packaging of the web site
doesn't always distinguish it from the mass of the half-assed, the
engineering on the inside of the game is rock-solid and comprehensive.
There isn't yet a trading feature, but you could always build your
friend an account, pay for a deck via PayPal, and then hand over the
account and password (your payment info doesn't get stored between
transactions).

Described as being similar to 300 in space, Hellas takes
Greek mythology fully into the realm of science fiction. The rich
setting of Hellas combines the two genres, resulting in
spacefaring races of Amazorans, Goregons, Hellenes, Myrmidons, and more,
exploring the depths of space and visiting, colonizing or invading
strange planets. Heroes fight to determine the fate of the galaxy,
wielding the powers of the gods and high technology against the return
of a dark empire. With a well-defined story arc and big plans for the
Hellas brand in the works, gamers will enjoy the epic scope and
new approach of this science-fantasy system.

This slim little tuxedo of a spy-caper game from a few Gen Cons ago
was released as a beautiful booklet and then vanished. Now it's back
as a PDF, priced just right for what some have criticized as a bit of
a clever trick for fooling your players into metagaming, disguised as
a complete game - but while Wildernes of Mirrors is certainly designed for talented and
experienced roleplayers, of the sort who could flesh out almost
anything into a successful session, it also works hard for its money
with stunning graphic design, a pitch-perfect explanatory voice, and,
yes, a complete system (just not a crunchy one). We are truly sad you
can't have the reflective-cover version, but we're glad to see this
edition, just as your gift target will be. (The target's chimney is
protected by an elaborate system of lasers, so to get down, we'll
first have to disable them at the fuse box...)

Hot War asks the question, what if the Cuban Missile Crisis sent the
Cold War hot? A semi-sequel to Cold City, the RPG of hidden agendas,
trust, and monster hunting in 1950 Berlin, it also asks what if both
sides deployed not just nuclear and chemical weapons, but also the
"Other Weaponry" - hideous devices and creatures born of Nazi research
during World War II? In a shattered London, as survivors hang on under a
fractious British government, the player characters, as members of the
Special Situation Group, are tasked with the investigation and
containment of Soviet monstrosities and counter-espionage activities.
Though survival in this grim future of years past is important, the
emphasis in Hot War is upon a character's relationships, and in
particular, his hidden agendas. Each character has two agendas - one personal and
the other given by his secret masters - with each providing a mechanical
bonus that has a limited number of uses before it has to be resolved.
This gives Hot War a dramatic pace echoing the "quality" BBC television
that is its inspiration.

For several years now, Marcus L. Rowland has been exploring various
aspects of Edwardian science fiction, Horror, and fantasy via his
Forgotten Futures series, raising money for good causes with each
new CD release. Forgotten Futures X marks a departure for the
series, as its first licensed entry and because it steps back into the
Victorian era, or one very much like it. Forgotten Futures X is
based upon the fantasy novel Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton, which
depicts a world of manners versus savagery and what happens when social
conventions are broken in a nation populated by dragons! It includes a
full exploration of the setting, and the society and culture of the
dragons. It also explains the draconic practice of cannibalism (by which
a dragon grows stronger and more powerful) and the social mores
connected with it, the breaking of which form the basis for the novel.
Along with the background information, the game includes two scenarios
(one amusingly named "The Crimson Claw Assurance Society"), offering everything needed to play.

Thus we close the curtain on our 2008 OgreCave Christmas Gift Guide,
providing a few downloadable gift ideas in case you need something quick
for a forgotten friend this holiday season. But when time isn't so
short (or when you head back to the stores after the holidays, gift cards in hand), be sure to look over our other 2008
gift lists and see what else we liked from the past year.